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Monday, September 10, 1979
Mt.View Road, on the way to
Boonville, California
Dear Shih Fu,
In a single day, how many living beings see me? How many do I see? In a month, how many living beings have I crossed paths with and affected? How many have influenced and touched me? Not just human living beings, but those with two feet, four feet, many feet and no feet. Those beings with form and without form; those with thought and without thought, and those with neither thought nor no-thought. There are beings born from eggs, from wombs, from moisture and from transformation. Some beings inhabit the earth. Some live in the water, fire or air. There are beings who live in space or who are born and dwell in forests, underground, and inside other beings. There is a measureless ocean of living beings in all ten directions of the universe (Dharma Realm), and to the ends of empty space. Everything is "alive". Even rocks have a lifespan. We just go so fast we fail to see it. In a lifetime, the number of living beings we have encountered is incalculable.
"All these many kinds (of living beings) I will accord with and attend to, serving them and making gifts to them, just as if I were respecting my own parents. I will treat them as I treat my teachers and elders, as well as Arhats, even as I attend to the Thus Come Ones, without any difference in my attitude.
"For those who suffer illness, I will be a good doctor. For those who have lost their way, I will show them the right road. I will be a bright light for those who are in the darkness of night. I will cover and shelter those who are in poverty." The Bodhisattva, in this way, benefits all beings levelly and equally. --"Universal Worthy's Conduct"
Chapter 36
If I am good to all beings, then they learn goodness and are good, in turn, to others. If I am bad to beings, they harbor hatred and resentment and pass it on in turn. So, if the world isn't good, it's because I'm not good. But this is still holding to a view of self and others. If I can expand the measure of my mind to contain the whole world, then all is one. All beings in all the paths of rebirth are my parents. All earth and water has served as the substance of one of my bodies. All elemental air and fire has previously sustained the life of one of my bodies. Great Compassion is being one with everyone. Being one with everyone is the substance of all Buddhas.
All Buddhas, Thus Come Ones, take the heart of Great Compassion as their substance. --Avatamsaka Sutra "Universal Worthy's Conduct and Vows", Chapter 40
So, taking care of and being good to all living beings is the same as taking good care of myself. And when I respect and serve and make offerings to all beings, I'm doing it to all Buddhas. It's the same. All beings are the body of all Buddhas. It's said, "All living things are contained within a hair-pore of the Buddha's body." And, yet what is big and small? Because it's also said,
Each and every minute speck of dust contains Buddhas equal in number to the total number of tiny dust motes in all worlds. --Avatamsaka Sutra, Chapter 40
The heart of Great Compassion is just simple kindness and goodness shown to all beings. And, yet this simple attitude embraces and goes beyond the ultimate understanding of the mind. The Buddhadharma is like that. Modern physics is straining to make revolutionary breakthroughs now and coming to the same conclusions that sages have known in their hearts since aeons ago.
July 24, 1979
We are sitting in meditation on the side of the road under a Cypress tree. The air is clean out here. The only fragrance is a burning stick of incense. As the sun sets, the wind relaxes. Living outside, one is constantly brought face-to-face with birth and death. It says,
Within each variety of kshetras are
inconceivable worlds.
Some are being created, some are
being destroyed,
While some, having once existed, are
now extinct.
Just like the leaves of a forest,
some hang and some fall down.
So, too, within the kinds of kshetras,
worlds are created, worlds are destroyed.
Avatamsaka Sutra
Chapter 5, Part 3
When we bow through the tall grass and weeds, we enter an ocean of worlds of plants, bugs, and microscopic organisms. Some are young and green, some are old and sun-bleached. They are all changing--coming into being, dwelling, going bad and destroyed (extinct). The animals, the sea creatures, the people in the small towns and passing cars--we all share this reality. Everything changes, nothing stays. Look at the empty shell of a grasshopper, a falling star, my teeth cavities--they all speak the same Dharma: impermanence.
As the tea water comes to a boil, the rays of the setting sun hit the steam clouds. The cloud of steam is made up of billions of tiny swirling particles. They rise up in a mist and then vanish into empty space. I never saw this before. All the countless tiny particles! I turn and look at the incense smoke. It's the same, but made up of even smaller particles. "Now you see it, now you don't." In physics, this is basic: everything is made up of the same atoms. Matter and energy are not really created or destroyed. It all simply changes shape and appearance. In the Prajna Paramita Sutra it says,
...whatever is form is emptiness; whatever is emptiness is form.
A couple stops and asks, "What's a Buddha?" and "Do you believe in God, or do you have your own God?" I can't find words to answer. I'd like to be able to say, "Well, it's this way, or that way," but I know so little about how it really is. A year ago, I would have piped right up with an answer. Now, we just bow in silence and learn from everybody and everything.
Our minds are coming apart at their one-dimensional seams. I want to grab and hold on to something. We are used to figuring things out and putting them into nice words. But now it's all becoming like the tea steam, incense smoke, and the grass and weeds: they can't be got at and yet they still exist.
All dharmas are non-dual and there are none which are not non-dual.
It's just like empty space. If you try to find it in any of the ten
directions, in the past, present, or future, you will fail to get at
it. However, it's not the case that empty space does not exist.
The Bodhisattva contemplates all dharmas in this way: they are totally
unobtainable. But it is not the case that all dharmas do not exist.
Avatamsaka Sutra
Ten Practices Chapter 21
Practice #8
And God? God cannot be got at, either. Even among people of the same faith, they can't agree on what God is. Everybody has their own God, because everything is made from the mind alone. That is why the ultimate state in Buddhism is non-attachment. It's in letting go of all views and attachments, emptying even emptiness, that we discover the ultimate.
People ask us, "Well, isn't Buddha your God?"
The answer is no. Because where most religions believe in, "My God alone is true," and take to know, love and serve that God as the ultimate state, Buddhism says all beings have the Buddha-nature and all can become Buddhas. The ultimate state in Buddhism is non-attachment, an "unattached, unbound, liberated mind," as the Avatamsaka says.
I remember overhearing a conversation between the Ven. Abbot and a disciple while riding in a car in Kuala Lumpur.
Disciple: "Master, some people say there's only one Buddha and others say there are many Buddhas. How is it? Are there many Buddhas or only one?"
Master: "Basically, there's not even one Buddha. There is just great wisdom."
Sometimes, at the end of a long, good day of bowing, when the body is soft and quiet and the mind doesn't know whether my nostrils are pointing up or down, I get a little glimpse of the way the Sutras say it is. It must be so.
Peace in the Way,
Disciple Kuo T'ing
(Heng Ch'au)
bows in respect